To the Ends of the Earth

To the Ends of the Earth (1948) is a American crime film noir directed by Robert Stevenson and written by Sidney Buchman and Jay Richard Kennedy. The drama features Dick Powell, Signe Hasso, and others. Based on the files of the United States Department of Treasury, agent Michael Barrows (Powell) follows a narcotics trail "to the ends of the Earth." The road takes him from Shanghai to Cairo, from Beirut and Havana, in order to stop a drug smuggli... more

To the Ends of the Earth (1948) is a American crime film noir directed by Robert Stevenson and written by Sidney Buchman and Jay Richard Kennedy. The drama features Dick Powell, Signe Hasso, and others. Based on the files of the United States Department of Treasury, agent Michael Barrows (Powell) follows a narcotics trail "to the ends of the Earth." The road takes him from Shanghai to Cairo, from Beirut and Havana, in order to stop a drug smuggling operation. When first released The New York Times gave the film a mixed review, and wrote, "To the Ends of the Earth, for all the journalistic austerity of its introductory sequences inside the narcotics division of the Treasury Department and at the United Nations council table in Lake Success, is predominantly a cops-and-robbers tale that relies too heavily on physical violence to make its impress. Unfortunately, this heightens the synthetic flavor of the picture and accounts in large measure for the attitudinized nature of the story's... less